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Archive for April, 2012

French cat hitches ride to Munich

Curiosity did not kill Quincy the cat, but it did leave him mightily confused after he hopped into a van to explore it near his home in Paris, and found himself driven to Munich 850 kilometres away.

The grey and white kitten became an unwitting stowaway in the van, emerging without much French sangfroid.

“He was very thin and seemed perturbed when he arrived,” said Eveline Kosenbach from the animal rescue shelter in Munich where he spent more than a week while cross-border efforts were made to find his owners.

Numerous phone calls, emails and even a personal appeal from the mayor of Jouy-en-Josas for his owners to come forward eventually bore fruit and his owners made the pilgrimage to Munich to pick him up.

Reports that Quincy had by this time regained his poise and greeted his owners with little more than a Gallic shrug could not be confirmed, although it is thought he has been put on a diet to combat the effects of Bavarian cuisine.

Hiker saved by bear after lion attack

Robert Biggs, 69, was on a hike in north-central California when he found a mother bear and her newborn 40 feet away from him.

After watching the animals for a few minutes, he turned back on his trail, only to be suddenly attacked by a lion, who grabbed his backpack.

"He grabbed me from behind and knocked me to the ground," Biggs told The Huffington Post. "I was on my knees. I had my rock pick out because i was on a steep incline, and I smashed the cat in the head with it. He screamed, but he didn’t let go.

"That’s when a blur on my left side grabbed the lion by its throat – turns out it was the momma bear. I heard a tremendous screeching, some growling noises."

Biggs explained that the animals clashed for a further 15 seconds before the cat ran away.

The mother bear soon also left Biggs behind, who had bite marks, scratches and bruises. He added that he owes the bear his life.

"I’m 100% sure it did want to save my life," he said. "We made eye contact. I’d seen the bears before and I know she knew who I was."

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Largest American ISPs Will Choke Pirate’s Pipe

A number of the country’s major Internet service providers have finally reached an agreement with the music and movie copyright outfits RIAA and MPAA, and are going to soon apply a kind of “three-strikes” regime in order to discourage online piracy.

Since this July, some of the largest US broadband providers, including Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable, are going to introduce a graduated response system, which will focus on stopping repeat infringers by throttling their broadband connection. The names of the Internet service providers involved in the move was recently published at the Association of American Publishers’ annual meeting by the RIAA’s head Cary Sherman.

This will work as following: at first case of infringement the subscriber will get a notification, informing them about piracy, copyright infringement, and breaching the agreement with the broadband provider. For the second case of infringement, they will receive another notification, this one asking the user to acknowledge receipt and sign a “pledge” to stop downloading unauthorized material. Finally, the third case of infringement will make the user face a Mitigation Measure Copyright Alert, which means that his Internet connection will be downgraded. However, nobody still can suspend VOIP, e-mail address, security or TV service.

However, the program itself isn’t enough to catch the copyright offenders, and that’s where the copyright owners come in to play. After finding an infringing torrent, they will notify the Internet service provider, who in response must pin-point the IP address and take action.

The scheme seems to be easy enough, and some may believe that this can help to entirely solve the piracy problem. However, the truth is that it can’t. Not only that it is virtually impossible for copyright owners to track every single torrent file in the Internet, but also an IP address can’t say for sure who exactly is behind it. Considering the fact that the music industry used the technique of “someone else using the IP” when caught pirating, anyone else can use the same excuse now.

This summer we will probably see how feasible this program is. The experts believe that VPNs, proxies and other ways of hiding your identity will be used widely, thus mocking this idea like they always did.

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Sweden May Kill off Banknotes

Sweden, known as the first country to introduce bank notes back in the 17th century, is about to follow its pop star’s advice and replace the cash with cyber transactions.

According to the American press reports, Bjoern Ulvaeus, an ex-member of Abba, has been instrumental in lobbying the authorities to give up banknotes and move to electronic cash.

Indeed, in most Swedish cities, the public transport doesn’t accept cash. Instead, the tickets are prepaid or bought through a mobile phone text message. A number of businesses also accept only cards. Even some bank offices have refused to handle cash altogether – this is more convenient and they may be confident that they won’t have to get themselves robbed.

However, this electronic new world isn’t for everybody. Curt Persson, the chairman of the country’s National Pensioners’ Organization, claims that there’s a trouble for elderly people in rural areas that either don’t have credit cards or have no idea how to use them to withdraw money. This can lead to a crisis, as people won’t be able to buy food or flat pack furniture.

Still, the reports say that even the churches have started installing card readers instead of the traditional collection plates. According to the statistics, cash makes up only part of 3% of the national economy, while this figure is around 9% in Europe and 7% in the United States. The question was why Bjoern Ulvaeus was so interested in a cashless society, and the answer may be found in the movie “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, which you might have already downloaded from us. The Sweden, as shown in the movie, is full of guns, violence, nazis, and open sandwiches. Ulvaeus confirmed in the interview that it was all an issue of security.

Ulvaeus’ son has already been robbed 3 times, so he wants Sweden to move to a digital economy in order to make life harder for thieves. The country’s Bankers’ Association admits that the shrinkage of the cash economy has led to the number of bank robberies reducing from 110 in 2008 to 16 last year. In addition, electronic transactions will make it difficult to hide cash, bribe people, or get engaged in shadow economy activities.

On the other hand, this has led to an increase in cybercrime, but Ulvaeus doesn’t seem to be too concerned over this issue.

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Bus driver ‘sacked for eating a grape’

A 66-year-old man has allegedly been sacked by National Express Coaches for eating a grape. Michael Shephard, who claims he was not driving while munching the fruit, is shocked and riled by his dismissal for breaking company regulations.

Shephard is quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying: "I am so angry. I thought I would be given a disciplinary for eating a grape, but not sacked.

"I don’t eat or drink while I am driving but I was just sat stationary at the bus terminus in Bedworth for a few minutes and took a grape to wet my mouth a bit."

Revealing his health complications, he added: "I had a heart bypass 12 months ago and the medication dries your mouth so I just take a sip of water or a grape sometimes when I’m sat at the station or terminus.

"I had already eaten my lunch so there was only a few grapes left in my lunchbox. And rather than getting off the bus to eat the grape I just stayed sitting in the cabin.

"I explained why I needed to have a sip of water or a grape every hour or so but they said it is still against the rules. They are just taking the rules to the next level."

A National Express spokesman said: "The driver in question hasn’t exhausted the disciplinary process that we have as a company and as a result we cannot make any public comment.

"However we do hold ourselves to high levels of safety and customer care standards."

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Man killed buried under 20-foot mound of pinto beans

A 56-year-old man was killed when he was buried under a 20-foot mound of pinto beans at a warehouse in Colorado, police said.

Raymond Segura Jr. was pronounced dead at the Brush, Colorado, facility of the Kelley Bean Company after efforts to reach him alive were unsuccessful, Morgan County Undersheriff Dave Martin said.

"We moved several tons of beans to get to him," Martin said.

Martin said emergency personnel were summoned to the site at 11:30 a.m. on reports of a worker trapped in a pile of loose pinto beans. Martin said dozens of rescue workers and even four inmates from the county jail spent an hour digging through a 20-foot high mound of the legumes to get to the trapped worker, but he was dead when crews reached him.

Segura was a longtime resident of the area and had worked at the warehouse for between 12 and 15 years, Martin said.

The cause of the accident, how the victim became trapped and the exact cause of death are under investigation, he added.